Category: Article

There’s a saying that goes something like this: I against my brother, and I and my brother against the world. That’s also a fair, if laconic, synopsis of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer-winning play, the first ever won by an African-American woman. Topdog takes on issues of race, masculinity, sibling rivalry, and devastated family structures in furious and acidly witty dialogue that flows out in its own peculiar rhythm, like a jazz riff. In fact, Parks takes care to turn not merely the dialogue, but the entire story structure off-kilter. The two brothers of the story, ominously named Lincoln and Booth, are both down on their luck and desperate to advance their lives. That they have no one but each other might be more harmful than healthy. Older brother Lincoln has already walked away from his former life as a street-hustling card swindler. Instead, he’s taken a humiliating job in a sideshow impersonating his namesake president, complete with stovepipe hate and white makeup, so that carnivalgoers can pretend to assassinate him. But Booth is no good at anything but shoplifting, and desperately wants Lincoln to teach him how to deal three-card monte. Things get weirder from there. Mixed Blood’s production is a collaboration with Washington, D.C.’s Studio Theater, starring actors Thomas Jones and Jahi Kearse, who bring their Capitol version of the Broadway play to Minnesota.
Mixed Blood, 1501 S. 4th St.,
(612) 338-6131, www.mixedblood.com

Minneapolis’s Lake Harriet is known for many things—its bandshell and summer concerts, multitudes of strollers, kamikaze inline skaters talking on cell phones, and cyclists shamelessly riding the latest goofy recumbent bike. As an urban lake collecting runoff from treated lawns and storm sewers, it’s not the first place I’d go for drinking water. On any given day, though, there’s a steady stream of pilgrims lining up to fill bottles and jugs at a green pump on the northwest side of the lake, just below the trolley tracks.

Many appear to be in or close to their golden years, so you’d be forgiven for wondering if this is some kind of fountain of youth about sixteen hundred miles north of where Ponce de León was last seen. According to devotees, the water tastes great and is chock-a-block with iron. It is drawn from a deep well separate from the lake’s water supply. Bob, who drives up in a silver Mustang, says he has been getting water at the pump for more than thirty years. “It just tastes good, you know?” At least it’s better than the tap water at his home in St. Louis Park. “If you let it sit long enough, the sediments settle at the bottom of the bottle!” he says with enthusiasm. This doesn’t strike me as a particularly persuasive endorsement.

Pho, a Vietnamese transplant in his sixties wearing a Bahamas sweatshirt, reckons he has been visiting the pump weekly for at least seven years. “It has a very natural taste and it’s very good for coffee,” he says.

For Jane, a dignified, blue-eyed bifocaler from Edina, the well is more than a source of water. “It’s a very interesting place to come because of the people,” she says. “It’s almost symbolic—how deep it is and how people come together around it.”

As the sun is going down, Paul pulls up on a well-worn road bike with a big empty jug tethered to it. He is forty-seven years old, a stay-at-home dad who describes himself as a “refugee from the world of advertising.” He has sideburns that would look good on Crosby, Stills, Nash, or Young. Paul says the water from the pump reminds him of childhood camping trips in Canada where he could dip his hands in the lake and just take a drink. “I keep coming back to this water. Somehow my body knows the difference when I’m drinking other water,” he says. He relates some pump lore to me: Supposedly, it takes so long for water to drain into the deep aquifer that the water presently flowing from the pump may never have been exposed to manmade pollution. That strikes me as unlikely, but we end up discussing a variety of political outrages until it’s dark.

According to Jim Fagrelius, director of operations for the Park and Recreation Board, the pump was installed in 1910 and it pierces 262 feet down to a level of sedimentary rock called the Shakopee Formation. His agency maintains the pump year-round, clearing snow away and chipping ice off in winter. The Minneapolis Department of Health checks the well’s bacteria levels every two to four weeks, and—this may come as a shock to some of the pump’s regulars—the Park Board occasionally treats the water with chlorine when those levels pass a certain threshold.

After all the hype I’ve exposed myself to, the water is a little disappointing on the palate. Although it lacks the chemical or floral overtones of city water in midsummer, it has a distinctive metallic tang that makes my lips pucker and my tastebuds shrink. Still, it is pleasantly cold, and it may be worth getting used to—if not for its rejuvenating properties, then for its social possibilities.
—Dan Gilchrist

The Guthrie’s annual spot of Dickens, as always, remains a recommended option for your holiday theatergoing this year, but it’s always possible that four dead people scaring the hell out of an old man isn’t Christmassy enough for you. In that case, why not try a story about a kid whose parents are dead, or at least missing (perhaps they’re off frightening the miser in the other play), who winds up living in the gutters with a street gang, belting out cheerful songs about pickpocketing, love and food! Glorious food! Kidding aside, this national touring production of the Oliver Twist-based musical is well worth your time if you’re a fan of musicals. This is the slightly darker and more sinister Oliver! as revised by producer Cameron Macintosh, which debuted in London in 1994. Despite a successful run, it’s only now getting a stateside debut, and we’re fortunate enough to get the opening slot. Just don’t go picking any pockets to raise the price of a ticket, OK?
Ordway, 345 Washington St., St. Paul,
(651) 224-4222, ordway.org

David Sedaris’s wry and reliably funny tale of his soul-flattening job as a Macy’s Christmas elf has become a holiday tradition in its own right, taking its place in a sardonic sub-pantheon of Santa tales that includes A Charlie Brown Christmas and Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story. After gaining fame in monologue form on NPR in the mid-nineties, Sedaris’ story has taken small theaters by storm, and with each new December gets staged by what seems like eighty dozen companies. Locally, that happy duty falls to Theater Limina, who last we saw this October doing Harold Pinter’s backwards bit of breakup bathos, Betrayal. Santaland shares the BLB stage this month with the equally irreverent holiday show from local thesps Craig Johnson, David Mann, Joseph Scrimshaw, and Sarah Gioia, whose Fringe Festival comedy The Worst Show in the Fringe was comical and snarky and smart and totally failed to live up to its name. (And you’ll forgive us if we give a small holler about Rake columnist Colleen Kruse’s Christmas Overeasy, Thursdays this month at BLB.)
BLB, 810 W. Lake St.,
(612) 825-3737, blb.ciceron.com

The trees outside were blowing and the sky was threatening to open up for the first time in months. It was a perfect night for a Grimm Brothers-style fairy tale, and Elizabeth Von Beringberg was treating ten members of the Minneapolis Writers’ Workshop to her version of exactly that. Gathered around a table in a Zuhrah Shrine Center in South Minneapolis, the group listened closely and scribbled madly on formal comment sheets as she read through intricate descriptions of castles, countesses, and cobblestone streets.

Peggie Carlson, the evening’s mediator, called time. The hands shot up. Von Beringberg listened as historical fiction writer after poet after novelist volunteered their comments and suggestions. Although each complimented the incredibly descriptive work, all suggested significant changes to the story’s format and language. Minnesota Nice wasn’t exactly checked at the door, but the constructive criticism was unfiltered. At first, the soft-spoken Von Beringberg attempted to explain away the critiques, but she had not uttered more than a sentence when Carlson kindly hushed her. “I know you’re new to the group, and I know it’s hard,” the children’s book author and memoir writer told her. “But you have to be quiet and not respond. We’d be defending all night otherwise.”

Publication has been the members’ aim since the workshop first began, back in the Depression era. Thought to be the oldest meeting of its kind in the country, it was originally started with Works Progress Administration funds; state WPA director Hubert Humphrey approved monies for two “Writing to Sell” classes at the downtown library. Students soon requested that one of these classes be changed into a workshop format and voilà! The Minnesota Writers’ Workshop was formed.

The group hasn’t received federal funds since 1939, and the location has shifted more than a few times in the last sixty-odd years (most of the moves came after a long run at the 620 Club on Hennepin Avenue), but the premise remains the same: Support writers of all kinds and help them write and edit their way to publication. It seems to work. Back in 1971, the last time anyone counted, workshop members had 400 published books.

On this fall evening, the reading and critiquing continued into Mary Boyd’s anticlimactic end to a romance novel; through Charlotte Sullivan’s hilarious poem about the loss of her feminist principles when her husband looks under the hood of her car; to Kate Kane’s funny but rushed memoir of her father. Then, exactly two hours after it began, Carlson brought the gavel down and the workshop adjourned for the several thousandth time in its existence. A call was made to head to the bar (the Shriners have one in-house!), but some things have changed, and most people passed on the invite, gathered their manuscripts, and rushed out into the restless night.—Katie Quirk

The ordinary menu and strikingly brief wine list could make Marcus Samuelsson run screaming from this place, but perhaps there is a lesson of survival in the forty-seven years of steadfast service Al and Alma’s has offered Lake Minnetonkans. Overlooking Cook’s Bay in Mound, this once-seasonal hangout for boaters now remains open nearly year-round, closing only for part of January and February. It’s not the kind of place you find by accident, even if you come by water. The reward for your voyage will be a comfortable, kid-friendly setting, a nice view and a truly Minnesotan selection of steaks, ribs, and fish. Regulars tell us everything there is dependable, but we recommend the filet mignon perched atop a grilled portabello mushroom cap in a puddle of creamy blue cheese sauce with garlic mashed potatoes crisped and cut into pie-like wedges. If you like to aid digestion with something stronger than wine, bring your own bottle and buy a set-up.

When ex-president Millard Fillmore led a steamboat expedition up the Mississippi 149 years ago, it may have looked like a publicity stunt for the Know-Nothing party. Maybe he was just looking for a good cup of coffee brewed fresh from organic, shade-grown beans. Of course, in 1854, all coffee was organic and shade-grown by default. Dow Chemical had not yet invented the hazardous compounds now in widespread agricultural use, and the hybrid beans designed for growth on deforested mountainsides were not available. Even so, when the Grand Excursion reenactment of Fillmore’s expedition arrives in St. Paul next summer, you can get a shot of the future with an otherwise historically correct cuppa Joe. This is something you could not have found in the metro area as recently as last year: a bean roasted with solar power.

The solar roasting recently began at Old Man River Café on Smith Avenue, just south of the High Bridge. Historian, publisher, and restaurateur Jon Kerr admits the roaster won’t be powered directly by the bank of six photovoltaic panels installed on the café roof in October. “Truth be told,” he said, “it goes into our general electrical supply.” But the 1.1 kilowatt array will deliver thirty amps, roughly the same amount of power required to run the roaster Kerr and co-owner Chuck Debevec use for the shade-grown organics they sell.

When The Rake arrived to have a look, electrician Mike Berg was boring a hole through the Victorian-era brick foundation to admit a conduit that will carry the current from the roof. One of the fifteen-square-foot “Sunny Boy” solar panels was on display inside the café, looking like a blue formica table-top propped against a wall. Nearby, a charity-fundraiser-style thermometer poster showed the cost of the project—an impressive and daunting $12,030.

Like the 1854 expedition, the Sunny Side Project, as it’s been dubbed, has been a bit of an odyssey. Kerr was approached about a year ago by neighbors who thought someone ought to showcase solar technology. On St. Paul’s West Side, environmental causes take on extra clarity in the shadow of Xcel Energy’s High Bridge coal burner. The plant has operated for decades under the EPA’s grandfather clause, which grants exemptions from emission control requirements to older facilities that have not been remodeled. When Kerr agreed to let the café be the poster child for solar power, a small group formed to raise funds. Memberships in “the Sunny Side Club” were sold for fifty dollars and up. More than seventy-five donors have now brought the total to within five hundred dollars of the goal. The end product? Sunny Side Blend, an aromatic medium-light roast of Nicaraguan, Peruvian, and Colombian beans.

It’s unlikely that members of Fillmore’s expedition had much in common with the activists behind the Sunny Side Project, some of whom reportedly chafed at the apparent male bias in the brand name of the solar panels. Fillmore was noted for sponsoring compromise slavery legislation that included the Fugitive Slave Act, which required the return of escaped slaves to their owners even if they were captured in the free North. Fillmore ran for a second term as a member of the evanescent Know-Nothing party on the rather narrow platform of seeking to ban Catholics from holding public office and increasing restrictions on immigration. The expedition reenactment reaches St. Paul next summer, and Kerr has already developed a coffee to bridge the gap: Expedition Coffee is a darker roast than Sunny Side and features the grim countenance of “the Last Whig” himself printed on every bag of beans. Even if the reenactment carries a little baggage from Fillmore’s dubious views, the team will be treated to the most politically correct cup of coffee in Minnesota, and they’ll like it.—Joe Pastoor

No, they’re not giants yet. But they loom pretty large. Brooklynites John Flansburgh and John Linnell, aka They Might Be Giants, now wield the awesome power that comes with winning a Grammy for writing a sitcom theme. But they’re still very much the same lovably eccentric cult rockers, singing about James K. Polk, purple toupees, and nightlights that daydream of being lighthouses. We spoke recently with Linnell—the lanky one with the accordion—about the duo’s current projects, including the pleasingly quirky documentary Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns. TMBG also just finished its second kids’ project, an illustrated book and CD called Bed Bed Bed. They’ll play a short, free set and sign books December 8 at Wild Rumpus bookstore.

THE RAKE: Was making Bed Bed Bed different than No!, your first kids’ record, now that you’ve got your son?

LINNELL: That’s a good question. Obviously I had a lot of experience with getting my son to go to bed by that time. But part of it was, we just wanted to do this thing that was cool. We often think, for instance, how cool it would be to have a picture book with a CD stuck inside, this bizarre thing. We don’t always think in strictly practical terms about how the thing gets used. With Bed, we discovered pretty quickly that you can’t flip the pages that fast and really take in the illustrations. So really what the experience is about, I think, is the picture book is for bedtime, and it’s enhanced by these songs that the kid may already know, or can hear later.

THE RAKE: Even before you made those records, your music was already pretty well attuned to children’s sensibilities. How did you change your songwriting to make it “officially” children’s music?

LINNELL: We didn’t define it very fully when we started working on No! In some ways we were being a lot freer than usual. We felt no obligation to write the college-radio single. Normally we’d throw in a bunch of those. And we sometimes have stuff on our grownup records that’s a little too death-obsessed or in some other way dark for children.

THE RAKE: How do kids like the live shows?

LINNELL: They’re really engaging with it a lot of times. But they’re not ashamed to turn their backs if they’re bored, or run around. That’s tough. It’s a hard crowd to play for. We don’t want to do just anything to get their attention. We want to feel like we have some pride left at the end of the show.

THE RAKE: Last time you played First Avenue, I recall, the crowd filled the entire bar. How can you fit in these comparatively tiny bookstores?

LINNELL: There’s something about a bookstore that makes people behave themselves. But the young kids, there’s this chaos factor generated just by that. That’s been our main security problem, tiny hands grabbing electrical equipment. But the shows have been really fun. They’re not really just kids’ shows. Adults should come even if they don’t have kids. And maybe we can trick them into buying this book.

THE RAKE: Although you’ve been doing a lot of soundtrack work lately, it must have been pretty strange for guys who aren’t all that interested in going mainstream to win a Grammy.

LINNELL: The Grammy was totally weird. It meant a lot for us professionally because it legitimized the work that we do for hire. We’re much more of an institution now, in a weird way, even though we feel like that’s a ridiculous idea. A lot of people that liked us a long time ago when they were in college are now in jobs in places like Disney, and NPR, and Cartoon Network, so we get to do all kinds of things. But we still feel it’s a very personal project, that we just goof around and come up with stuff.

THE RAKE: Which is why you still devote so much energy to offbeat things like your CD soundtrack for McSweeney’s sixth issue.

LINNELL: The stuff that we get most excited by is what’s not trying to be huge. The only real problem for us is cooking up those ideas. That’s the challenge, to think of something interesting that isn’t just what everybody else already thinks of for you to do.

Wild Rumpus, 2720 W. 43rd St., (612) 920-5005, www.wildrumpusbooks.com

I don’t know what the exact clinical classification would be of my particular personality defect, I’m a person who regrets nothing and yet dreads everything. Maybe there isn’t even a name for it, and one day I could have this dysfunction named after me. “Yep, we finally had our aunt committed due to her lifelong struggle with Manic Lucia.”
My close friends know me well enough not to take offense when I cancel last-minute plans. I’ve even gotten so comfortable that I no longer feel the need to make up fake excuses. To be my friend, you have to understand that when I say that, while, yes, I did excitedly RSVP months ago to attend your daughter’s first birthday party, now that the actual date is here, I’d rather open-mouth kiss David Gest, and then jump through a flaming hoop of dog crap, nothing personal though. And I should explain that it doesn’t matter how appealing the plans are. I could have a date to get free highlights with Steven Tyler, eat lobster, and have hundred dollar bills shoved into my pockets. Yet somehow when it comes time to actually jump into the toxic twin’s limo, I’d really rather stay home, troll around on Ebay for hours looking for red lampshades, then turn the ringer off and curl up with Psychopharmacology for Idiots or some other light reading.
To add to the twistedness of this, when I do follow through with plans, I usually have a fine time. Hence the “no regrets” aspect of my Manic Lucia. I’m not proud of the fact that some people have nicknamed me “Anne Frank” due to my infrequent social outings. On the rare occasion I do make it out to a show, I know I have to be prepared to answer the question, “Do you still live in town?”—and that’s coming from my own sister.
Listen, I’m not an entirely undesirable pal. Say you want the kind of friend who, when you call, you know you’ll always get the machine. A friend who will never actually see the inside of your apartment. If you’re looking for someone who you can easily bail out of dinner plans with at the last minute, I’m your man. You can take comfort in knowing that we won’t hook up next week, and I won’t call you later.

Send birthday party invitations and/or flaming hoops of dog crap to Mary Lucia at popularcreeps@yahoo.com.